Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i Bassmaster

Absolute Bedlam Imagine rolling up on this pocket during practice. It’s like the Holy Grail of bed fishing locations. It seems you wouldn’t be able to make a blind cast without landing in the middle of a nest. Problem is, you are fishing Florida’s St. Johns River and the vast majority of these baby dens were created by tilapia. Notice the perfectly round craters? Bass aren’t so organized when fanning out a bedroom. That said, largemouth will take over a tilapia bed once it is vacated, saving them precious time and energy that can then be used for the spawning process. This becomes the definition of bedlam: a scene of uproar and confusion. There are so many vacated beds to check and so little time! Most anglers would put the…

THE ANGLER Quentin Cappo knows you love your flip-flops. He remembers the feeling of sunshine on his soles and a breeze blowing through his toes. But, like most of us, he also remembers the sting of a barb slicing into that toe, and the sound a crankbait makes when it sticks into human flesh. That’s why Cappo has adopted a new form of footwear over the last several months — one that is not only a growing trend in fishing footwear, but a welcome solution for a long-overlooked problem in bass fishing. Until recently, bass anglers just haven’t had anything great to put on their feet. A quick glance around the Bassmaster Elite Series field will reveal a rogue’s gallery of footwear, from flip-flops to sneakers to boots, and even…

What’s the key to coaxing a big, bedding bass to bite when that fish seems uninterested?Jerry Marr San Diego, Calif. Bassmaster Elite Series pro Brandon Cobb If the fish stays on the bed when your boat is nearby, it probably is catchable; however, some fish aren’t catchable at the time. That’s when I make note of the bed location, leave it for 30 minutes or so and come back and hit it from a distance at which the fish can’t know I’m there. I love finesse fishing bedding bass, but on stubborn bass 6 pounds or bigger, I like to tease them with bigger baits. A big swimbait can irritate a big fish into eating. She may not bite that bigger bait swimming through the bed but, if aggravated,…

THE OLD CLICHÉ that a bass is a bass is a bass may be true most of the time, but not when it comes to smallmouth. Smallmouth waters in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Canada are seeing record numbers of nonresident anglers making the trek north in search of the fabulous smallmouth action they read about in Bassmaster or see on TV. However, as visiting anglers are discovering, those Yankee brown fish are a different breed of cat. It doesn’t matter whether you’re coming from Alabama, Tennessee, southern Indiana or Ohio, Northern smallmouth and their habitats are distinctively different. In addition, glacial-lake fish often prefer dissimilar styles of lures and are built like footballs compared to the sleeker Southern smallies. “Our [Northern] fish act entirely differently than what we encounter…

SAY “OFFSHORE” IN Florida and most anglers envision 8 to 12 feet of water. Not incorrect, as the Sunshine State’s bass fisheries mostly comprise the shallow, weedy, bowl-type lakes that have historically dominated its competitive fishing scene. However, lakes like Kingsley, Placid, June-In-Winter and Santa Fe have significant elevation variances, creating lakes with depths of 30-plus feet (some over twice that deep). Deep sinkhole lakes also account for some of the plunging fisheries, but across the board, this unsung facet of Florida’s big-bass bonanza brings a mix of opportunity and consideration. Because depths much greater than average completely change the way anglers approach the offshore game — especially during summer and winter — bait selections often look more like those we’d carry onto a TVA reservoir. For Bassmaster Elite Series…

Pre-Tournament Prep Daiwa Tatula SV TW103 $199 | daiwa.com/us Features: The new Tatula SV is trimmed down to a sleek 100 size. The new reel weighs only 6.7 ounces and is one of the lightest, most controlled baitcasters on the market. Daiwa’s Zero Adjuster spool allows anglers to finely tune the spool tension, and works together with the T-Wing System to maximize casting distance and accuracy. Available in 6.3:1, high speed 7.3:1 and hyper speed 8.1:1 gear ratios, and comes in both left- and right-handed models. SpiderWire UltraCast $18.99-$249.99 | spiderwire.com Features: UltraCast is now available in two new colors, Aqua camo and Inshore camo, expanding the lineup, while still available in 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-, 65-, 80- and 100-pound tests. The line features a…

Date: April 27, 2019 Venue: Lake E, a remote flatland reservoir Water: 67 degrees, stained Weather: Cloudy, mid-60s, approaching rain/cold front Pro: Mark Menendez, 54, Paducah, Ky. A seasoned veteran, Menendez has won $1.2 million on the B.A.S.S. tour and qualified for five Classics. He holds the record for the biggest bass ever caught in an Elite-level B.A.S.S. event: 13 pounds, 9 ounces Boat: Skeeter FX21 bass boat with 250-horsepower Yamaha outboard, Motor Guide trolling motor, Garmin electronics and twin Power-Pole shallow-water anchors THE END OF 2018 was a period of significant upheaval in the world of professional bass fishing. Many longtime B.A.S.S. pros abandoned the Elite Series for a new, competing tournament circuit, one with a radically different format that eliminated a staged weigh-in and put a premium on…

CHAD MORGENTHALER DOESN’T like to be reminded of it, but, of course, he can never forget his first-ever professional bass tournament, the 2003 Bassmaster Top 150 on the Harris Chain of Lakes. He finished 129th after catching three bass on a crankbait. Morgenthaler and his wife were living then in southern Illinois, and he’d never before been to Florida, never seen so much vegetation in the water, never had to deal with Florida bass during a cold front. In a word, he readily admits he was “lost,” and for three practice days he wandered hopelessly through the Harris Chain’s seemingly endless canals, not knowing what he was even looking for. “Even with such a dismal finish, the tournament proved to be a tremendous learning experience for me,” says Morgenthaler, now…

A Shad Spawn Pattern For The Birds A Louisiana native goes all natural to find schools of spawning shad Robbie Latuso remembers watching the birds near his Gonzales, La., home one April morning. Many moons ago, before the Bassmaster Elite Series veteran took home a mega-sized trophy for winning the 2009 Central Open on Toledo Bend, he started following birds to find mega schools of bass chasing shad. “To me, April is all about the shad spawn,” Latuso says. “I like to target bass chasing them using a white spinnerbait. “The first time I learned about it,” he continues, “I was on a body of water near my house. The birds were going crazy diving into one end, and we went straight to them and started catching fish. The birds…

Congratulations to the newest members of the Bassmaster Lunker Club™. Membership in the club is free and open to any B.A.S.S. member who catches a largemouth bass weighing 10 pounds or more, a spotted bass weighing 5 pounds or more, or a smallmouth bass weighing 6 pounds or more, from Jan. 1, 2019, to the present. New Lunker Club members will receive an official certificate with holder and a gift pack. [Trophy Trends] To request an application, write to editorial@bassmaster.com or B.A.S.S., The Lunker Club, 3500 Blue Lake Drive, Suite 330, Birmingham, AL 35243. A photo documenting the catch must be provided, along with the length and girth of the bass. Only suitable photos will be published in Bassmaster Magazine. We will only accept entries for bass that are released…

WHEN YOU’RE FACED with pads, matted grass or some other aquatic vegetation that lends itself to fishing a hollow frog or a sputtering toad, which should you choose? On any given day or hour, the bass may prefer one to the other. You can avoid this conundrum by tying on one of several double-duty floating frogs that have lively kicker legs. The legs on these baits generate the sputtering sound, action and bubble trail you get with a typical toad. However, unlike solid toad baits that sink when paused, double-duty frogs float and give you the best of both worlds in a single lure. You can nudge them over slop, twitch and pause them in potholes and wind them over the surface in open water like a buzzbait. Aussie Bassmaster…

NOT MANY OF the 88 contestants fishing today’s Bassmaster Elite Series competed in or even remember the 1995 Bassmaster Superstars tournament on the Illinois River in Peoria, Ill., but Jay Yelas won’t ever forget it. He won the event with more than 30 pounds, all by fishing in a farmer’s milo field. “The river had flooded out of its banks and nearly inundated the field, too,” remembers Yelas, winner of the 2002 Bassmaster Classic, “but there was a high spot in the field that was still dry, and the bass had pushed right in against that edge, in less than a foot of water. They simply couldn’t go any further. “In rising water, most of the time bass will move up with the water, and that tournament was a good…

Strategies For Bedding Bass 1 [Understand The Spawn] Spring means spawning bass … along with volatile weather patterns and rapidly changing water conditions, both of which can greatly impact spawning patterns. Of course, even when bass are bedding in plain sight, they can be seemingly impossible to catch, but the following insights from Bassmaster Elite Series pros can guide you through the frustrating and exciting spawning season. Largemouth Spawning Basics Largemouth bass usually spawn in water temperatures ranging from 60 to 70 degrees. Bass in a given lake won’t all spawn at the same time. Some bass may be on their nests while others have finished spawning and still others have yet to begin the spawning process. Largemouth prefer shallow, sunlit areas with a hard bottom that are protected from…

Few things in a bass fishing tournament can ruin a day more than stress and second-guessing a game plan. Rookie Elite Series angler Taku Ito knows this. As he landed this bass during his very first Elite derby on the St. Johns River, Ito appeared to use tai chi movements to corral his catch. This Asian martial art focuses on relieving the physical effects of stress on the body and mind, a pretty awesome application for a bass angler trying to make a check while fishing against the best in the world. Ito, a 34-year-old Japanese native who qualified for the Elite Series through his first attempt at fishing the Basspro.com Bassmaster Central Opens, likely knows a thing or two about stress. He still speaks very little English. His wife,…